In general, I try to stick to Propellerhead Record / Reason to produce music. But now that I am investing in more natural-sounding external Sound Sample libraries (namely NI's Session Strings Pro and Modart's Pianoteq 3), it becomes trickier to integrate.
Managing all the MIDI clips and automation in one place is one challenge, but playing everything together without a dramatic performance drop (and hear clipping problems) IS a huge deal.
I've tried Record & Ableton Live so far. Live shown me today that it was pushing my CPU around 80-90% usage.
I'll admit, yes I'm doing my productions on a MacBook Pro. So I'm wondering...
Is there any better DAW hosts out there that could be more "gentle" and CPU friendly for projects that rewires Record & Reason into it?
Sub-question: Since my system is 64-bit, should I only consider DAWs & Plugins that are as well?